Firewire Cable Box Compatibility

This is a compatibility list for using Firewire with Mythtv. If you use firewire and it work ( or not ) please fill in the table below.

Date

Name

Cable Co

Cable box

Location

Channels

Notes

m/d/y

My name

My cable co

Cable box

Earth

All!

This is an example.

4/6/07

t0ny

Cable one

None (yet)

Caldwell, Id

None

They refuse to give me a box with firewire enabled saying it is for future use.

4/12/07

Bill

Comcast

DCT6416III

GR, MI

ALL

This unit is comcast PVR and I have everything working although HD is having quality issues.

5/19/07

Dave

Comcast

DCT3416

Portland, Or

Some

Some 5c encrypted HD Channels at the moment... oddly, PBS for one..

5/19/07

Josh

Comcast

DCT6200

Chicago, IL

Broadcast channels + CSPAN

I could get MTVHD when I had a better package (when I first signed-up)

12/02/07

Matt

Comcast

DCH3200

Pittsburgh, PA

Standard Cable, Digital (some), HD (some)

I get the basic cable channels, the Digital Classic, Digital preferred. I do NOT get Digital premium (HBO), and only some of the HD (one local HD - NBC), TNT, ESPN, Discovery...

2/12/08

Suresh

Comcast

DCT6200

Atlanta, GA

All standard cable, most digital, all basic HD

I can tune to any channel that is active on the box. Some channels are always problematic, some give no problems. I prime the port twice an hour if nothing is recording from the box, and get very reliable recordings from known good channels. Without priming it would get mostly failures when recording.

After trying a variety of firewire chipsets, the ones that work the best are the latest Agere chips FW323 v61 with no priming ( More Details Here) As for tuning, some SD channels simply will not work, for example all the Galaxy music only channels between 401 and up (we use our low def tuners via svideo for those). All our HD channels work including the "HD Plus" channels like Discovery HD, National Geographic HD, A&E HD, HD Movie channels, etc. However the 5C flag has been on in the past and maybe in the future.

2/23/08

Kelly

Time Warner

DCT6200

Dallas, TX

All non premium or Pay for view channels until last spring. Now only digital channels...and only sporadically

For about a year or so, MythTV worked amazingly well for me under Fedora 4 using the Firewire on my DCT-6200. Then, without warning, it became sporadic. It seems that they introduced a firmware update (I don't remember the version number) that broke it for me. After that point, all analog channels could only be accessed if I first changed the channels with a remote. Even then, they would crop off part of the picture. Digital channels still show up, but only when the firewire hasn't randomly shuffled nodes on me. It's almost impossible now to have a stable DVR with it, but I can still record digital channels from time to time. Before Time Warner took over from Comcast, several channels were 5c'd. Examples include: Discovery HD and ESPN HD. However, that is no longer the case. I don't use any premium channels, and so 5c has become a non-issue for me most of the time. I eagerly hope that the firewire code will recieve an overhaul soon to be compatible out of the box with the new kernels, and I hope that that will solve the firewire shuffling problem. (Unfortunately, I think that problem is TWC related. Might try getting a new box if I can ever get over my laziness about it) Incidentally, I am now running it under Ubuntu 7.04. (I switched after it stopped working)

3/1/08

John

Comcast

DCH3416

Santa Clara, CA

Some

Initial tests seem good. Able to get major networks in standard and HD.

4/10/08

Dejan

Comcast

DCH3200

Mountain View, CA

Most

Non-premium (both SD and HD) are available and recording since Oct 2007 has been mostly reliable. Due to some oddity an OTA HD station is 5C'd (channel 705 - the local CBS affiliate).

4/12/08

Jamie

Comcast

DCH3416

Seattle, WA

Most

Non-premium (both SD and HD) are available and recording reliably. Had to use broadcast mode.

Some brief testing with the OSX FireWire SDK and VLC. Changing channel via remote. The only channels that appeared to be available were the local networks, the live video portion of the TVguide and PPV preview channels, and the music channels (with slideshow).

Using the SA4250HDC/Point-to-point/100MB setting in Myth. Only works with one cable box: recordings revert to noise as soon as two boxes have been used. All SD and HD channels (including premium) work.